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A short, quick lesson in Creative Commons licensing. (Disclaimer: I am not an attorney, I am *definitely* not an intellectual property attorney, and this advice is not legal advice and may in fact be so bad that it will give you heartburn and ingrown toenails.)

When you pick a Creative Commons license, you are choosing how you are going to share something. Basically, there is a bundle of rights and privileges that you can choose to grant for the work you want to license. Approach it like ordering a combination-plate dinner from an old-school Chinese restaurant (one from column A, one from column B) and make a decision about each specific individual right or privilege that you want to grant, then add it all up and see what you've got.

Ok, so this has nothing to do with your question, but I saw a sign today that pretty much sums every man of a certain age and upbringing. "It isn't broke, it just lacks duct tape." Think we could turn that into a bumper sticker? On a side note, my dad denies this, but I do sometimes wonder if he just wrapped me in duct tape when I broke my collarbone some 35 years ago . . .

Barry -- thanks for the summary, which is nicer than what the website provides. Followup question is: how do you *document* which type of license you are "attaching" to a piece of work. I was entirely hoping there were a variety of Creative Commons marks (like the (R) mark or the (C) mark for traditional registrations/copyrights) that I could attach to bumperstickers or photos to show my intentions.

Yes. For offline works, you should identify which Creative Commons license you wish to apply to your work and then mark your work either: (a) with a statement such as “This work is licensed under the Creative Commons [insert description] License. To view a copy of this license, visit [insert url]; or, (b) send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.” or insert the applicable license buttons with the same statement and URL link.

The only difference between applying a Creative Commons license to an offline work and applying it to an online work is that offline works will not include the metadata and, consequently, will not be identified via Creative Commons-customized search engines.